Biography

William D. Carrigan is Professor of History at Rowan University. A native Texan, he graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1993. In 1999, he earned his PhD in American history from Emory University and joined the faculty in the Department of History at Rowan. 

At Rowan, Professor Carrigan has taught over 100 courses and thousands of students on such topics as the Civil War and Reconstruction, the American West, and the History of New Jersey. In 2013, he won a University-wide competition vote hosted by the Student Government Association at Rowan University and subsequently delivered his hypothetical "last lecture." In 2014, the Organization of American Historians named him a Distinguished Lecturer in American History.  In 2020, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences named him that year’s winner of the Excellence in Teaching Award.

He is the author or editor of numerous scholarly articles and four books, including The Making of a Lynching Culture: Violence and Vigilantism in Central Texas, 1836-1916 (Univ. of Illinois Press, 2004), winner of the Richard Wentworth Prize. Professor Carrigan's research has been cited widely in the news media, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Nation, and the Houston Chronicle.

Since 1995, he has been collaborating with Clive Webb and studying the lynching of Mexicans in the United States. With the support of grants and fellowships from numerous institutions, including the Huntington, the National Science Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and the Clements Center, they have published numerous articles and chapters on the subject as well as Forgotten Dead: Mob Violence against Mexicans in the United States, 1848-1928 (Oxford University Press, 2013). In February 2015, Professors Carrigan and Webb published a widely read article in the New York Times on their research. They are currently working on the lynching of the foreign-born in the United States and reaction to this violence in the United States and abroad.

In addition to his research with Professor Webb, Dr. Carrigan is engaged in research on the largely unstudied history of lynching in the United States between 1877 and 1882. He has also written five essays on different elements of United States historiography since 2014.

Most Recent Accepted/Published Works

 “African Americans and the Lynching of Foreign Nationals in the United States” Journal of World History, 33:4 (December 2022). With Clive Webb.

“The Rise, Fall, and Transformation of Consensus History” in Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method (London:  Bloomsbury, 2022).

“Cycles of Lynching: The U.S.-Mexican Border and Mob Violence against Persons of Mexican Descent in the United States, 1848-1928” in Gerardo Gurza and Andrew J. Torget, eds., Those Ragged Edges:  Histories of Violence along the US-Mexican Border (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2022). With Clive Webb.

“La Matanza and the Canales Investigation in Comparative Perspective” in John M. González and Sonia Hernández (eds.), Reverberations of Racial Violence: Critical Reflections on US History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2021), 92-102. Co-Authored with Dr. Clive Webb.

“Linchamientos: Mob Violence against Persons of Mexican Descent in the United States” in José A. Cobas, Joe Feagin, Daniel Delgado and Maria Chávez (eds.), Latinos in the New America: Racialization and Resistance (New York: Routledge, 2019), 19-45. With Clive Webb.